File - This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Kimberly McCarthy. She is scheduled to be executed Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013 for the July 1997 killing of retired college professor Dorothy Booth during a robbery. McCarthy's execution would be the first of a woman in Texas in more than eight years and the fourth overall in the state, where the 492 prisoners put to death since capital punishment resumed in Texas 30 years ago make it the nation's most active death penalty state. (AP Photo/Texas Department of Criminal Justice, File)

Lawyers for a Dallas woman scheduled to become Texas' 500 execution since the death penalty was reinstated have filed an appeal, claiming blacks were improperly excluded from her jury and her previous attorneys did nothing about it.

Kimberly McCarthy, 52, an African-American woman convicted of murdering her 71-year-old Anglo neighbor during a 1997 robbery to raise money to buy drugs, is scheduled to be executed next Wednesday for the July 1997 murder of Dorothy Booth. She would be the 500th killer executed in Texas since executions were resumed in 1982, and the fourth woman to be executed by lethal injection.

In it she asserts that Dallas County prosecutors inappropriately eliminated three African-Americans from serving on McCarthy's jury. Only one black sat on the jury that sentenced her to death. Two of the three prosecutors, Levin charges, were trained under former Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, a prosecutor whose three-decade tenure was criticized for discriminating against minorities.

The appeal cites a 2005 Dallas Morning News study that "being black was the most important trait affecting which jurors prosecutors rejected."

The appeal argues that McCarthy's trial lawyer was ineffective in not challenging the elimination of blacks, and that her first state appeals lawyer also was ineffective for not raising the issue.

According to trial testimony, McCarthy fatally stabbed Booth five times after visiting her home, ostensibly to borrow sugar. McCarthy then cut off her finger to steal a ring and fled with the victim's purse, credit cards and car.

A state court reversed McCarthy's conviction when it was learned that her written statement had been admitted as evidence even though she invoked her right to counsel. She was tried a second time, convicted and sentenced to death.

During the punishment phase of her trial, prosecutors presented evidence that she had murdered two other elderly women. Additionally, she had convictions for forgery, theft of services and prostitution.